The growth of online shopping has made the efficient and accurate fulfillment of customer orders a priority for online retailers and brick-and-mortar retailers with an online presence. Recently, fulfillment centers and warehouses supporting such retailers have begun to use robots to optimize order retrieval and delivery. These robots can include autonomous robots which operate without human intervention, remotely-controlled robots which operate through human guidance, or semi-autonomous robots which benefit from periodic or occasional human guidance.
While systems which rely exclusively on autonomous robots are often highly efficient, the inability of such robots to troubleshoot or solve problems on-the-fly often result in bottlenecks or inadvertent errors which can go undetected in order processing. On the other hand, systems which rely on robots controlled by a human operator are often hampered by the speed and availability of such operators. Thus, a logistics solution is needed which rely on the productivity and efficiency of robots but also benefit from high-level inputs from one or more human operators.
In addition, orders through online channels may include items stored in a variety of warehouses or inventory locations. Therefore, this logistics solution should also account for the dispersed nature of modern supply chain operations. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures and growing customer expectations, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems.